J. Swartz, a distinguished German painter, having engaged to execute a
roof-piece in a public townhall, and to paint by the day, grew
exceedingly negligent; so that the magistrates and overseers of the work
were frequently obliged to hunt him out of the tavern. Seeing he could
not drink in quiet, he one morning stuffed a pair of stockings and shoes
corresponding with those that he wore, hung them down betwixt his
staging where he sat to work, removed them a little once or twice a-day,
and took them down at noon and night; and by means of this deception he
drank without the least disturbance a whole fortnight together, the
innkeeper being in the plot. The officers came in twice a-day to look at
him; and, seeing a pair of legs hanging down, suspected nothing, but
greatly extolled their convert Swartz as the most laborious and
conscientious painter in the world.
Swartz had once finished an admirable picture of our Saviour’s Passion,
on a large scale, and in oil colours. A certain Cardinal was so well
pleased with it, that he resolved to bring the Pope to see it. Swartz
knew the day, and, determined to put a trick on the Pope and the
Cardinal, painted over the oil, in fine water-colours, the twelve
disciples at supper, but all together by the ears, like the Lapithæ and
the Centaurs. At the time appointed, the Pope and Cardinal came to see
the picture. Swartz conducted them to the room where it hung. They stood
amazed, and thought the painter mad. At length the Cardinal said,
“Idiot, dost thou call this a Passion?” “Certainly I do,” said Swartz.
“But,” replied the Cardinal, “show me the picture I saw when here last.”
“This is it,” said Swartz, “for I have no other finished in the house.”
The Cardinal angrily denied that it was the same. Swartz, unwilling or
afraid to carry the joke further, requested that they would retire a few
minutes out of his room. No sooner had they done so, than Swartz, with a
sponge and warm water, obliterated the whole of the water-colour
coating; then, re-introducing the Pope and the Cardinal, he presented
them with a most beautiful picture of the Passion. They stood
astonished, and thought Swartz a necromancer. At last the painter
explained the mystery; and then, as the old chroniclers say, “they knew
not which most to admire, his work or his wit.”